The Hunt of the Unicorn
by Minutia R
Summary: Seventy years before the events of The Pinhoe Egg, a group of wizards-including a very reluctant Gabriel de Witt-goes shooting on the grounds of Chrestomanci Castle, and there's things abroad in the woods.  For coeurgryffondor.
1. The Start of the Hunt

**Note: The title of this story, as well as the chapter titles, comes from a series of tapestries made in the Netherlands around 1500.**

**Warning: This story contains depictions of cruelty to animals.**

"I'm so glad you'll be shooting with us after all," said Amelia Allworthy, bright-faced and relentlessly cheerful, about as comfortable to look at as the sun at midday. But it was not midday now. Usually at this hour, Gabriel would be in his bed, not tromping across the castle grounds in pursuit of partridges, of all things.

"Your father—Monsignor Allworthy insisted," said Gabriel, with only a glance at Amelia. One might think that anyone who knew two dozen death spells would be able to carry a fowling piece without worrying that he would take his own foot off if his attention wasn't on it every second—but that one wouldn't be Gabriel de Witt. He didn't like guns, and that was that. "I don't see why. It's got nothing to do with—" Then he remembered who else was walking with him, and shut his mouth.

Geoffrey Allworthy made no bones about his opinion that _he_, and not Gabriel, ought to be the next Chrestomanci. Justice demanded it. There was no law that Chrestomanci had to have nine lives, just because the first two had. And Edmund Monjoie hadn't had any sons of his own—it was an entirely different case.

Gabriel would have been tempted to agree with him on purely selfish grounds were it not for two things. First, Geoffrey wasn't an enchanter, but only a fairly good sorcerer. Second—and more important—Gabriel wouldn't have trusted him with a pocket-watch, let alone the regulation of all the magic in the world.

In any case, it didn't matter what either of them thought. It wasn't their decision. But Geoffrey did not seem to realize this. He acted as though if only he shouted enough—if only he could goad Gabriel into shouting back—matters could be arranged to his satisfaction. The flaw in his plan was that Gabriel didn't shout. It gave him a headache.

"It's going to be splendid," Amelia went on relentlessly. "It's been a great year for chicks, Elijah says, and the Miss Littles have come out from Hopton . . ."

"Surely you don't want to draw de Witt's attention to the competition before you've got him firmly in your clutches," Geoffrey drawled. "You know which way the wind is blowing, don't you, Amelia?"

"Don't be a beast," said Amelia. "The pair of you are determined that I shan't enjoy the first shooting day of the season, aren't you? Well, I will. And so will you—_that_ will be my revenge."

Gabriel could hardly think of anything less likely—in his case at least. Geoffrey's temper would no doubt improve as soon as he'd killed something.

The path turned into Home Wood, and even Amelia could not chatter cheerfully beneath its trees. The silence was only broken by the shrill cry of a crow. Amelia stumbled backwards into Gabriel. Somewhat to his surprise, he didn't take off his own foot. "How horrible!" she said.

To the side of the path, the gamekeeper, Mr. Farleigh, was nailing the still-living crow to a wooden framework, where there were also nailed various other birds of prey and scavengers in various states of decay. He turned and glared at the newcomers from under knotted gray eyebrows.

"Meant to horrify," he said. "You oughtn't be in the woods, not today. I won't have you mucking things up."

There was a young, long-legged boy with Mr. Farleigh, and he took advantage of his master's turned back to reach out to the crow. Gabriel knew two dozen death spells, but nothing as gentle as what the gamekeeper's boy used. The cries quieted, and something like peace settled over the wood. "Sorry," the boy whispered. Gabriel thought the apology was probably for the bird, and not for Mr. Farleigh.

"Of course not," said Amelia. She hadn't noticed what had happened. No one seemed to have, apart from Gabriel. "It's only the shortest way to the drive. We won't disturb anything."

"As you're here," said Mr. Farleigh ungraciously, "may as well go on as back."

The drive was swarming with people and dogs already when they arrived, from village boys to act as pickers-up, to the usual run of castle wizards, to Monsignor Allworthy's splendid guests, to Monsignor Allworthy himself, more splendid than any of them, even in a worn-out tweed shooting jacket. "Layabouts!" he boomed cheerfully. "If I don't bag two hundred birds today, it will be your fault."

"De Witt's, you mean," said Geoffrey. "We'd have been here ages ago if not for his dawdling."

"That's not so," said Amelia. "I'm afraid I was awfully long getting dressed, Papa."

"Don't fret, girl," said Monsignor Allworthy. A long, haunting whistle drifted over the drive, and conversation everywhere stopped. "Let's find our pegs. You're next to me, Gabriel—we don't want you standing next to anyone with just one life when you start shooting, eh?"

Gabriel took up the post he was directed to, privately thinking it was an entirely sensible precaution. Amelia stood by the peg on his other side. "Really, Papa. Mr. de Witt may not be an experienced shot, but he's a very careful person. I shall always feel safe in his presence."

"Hark to the gentle huntress," snorted Geoffrey. "It's no use aiming for the heart, Amelia; he hasn't got one."

"If I hadn't," Gabriel returned quietly, "I'd turn you both out of your house when Monsignor Allworthy died for good, wouldn't I? But I won't, no matter what you say. So Miss Allworthy may spare herself any trouble on my behalf."

Amelia's eyes were suddenly bright with anger. "Is that what you think of me, Gabriel de Witt?"

Gabriel wasn't aware he'd said anything about what he thought of Amelia. He was only talking about himself. "I can't see why else you'd be kind to me," he said.

Amelia's knuckles went white on the stock of her gun, and she lifted her chin and looked at Gabriel without speaking. It wasn't anger making her eyes bright, or not only. Tears spilled out of them, and her mouth trembled, and she disappeared.

Geoffrey had left his peg and was standing at Gabriel's shoulder, shouting, "Don't you dare speak to my sister that way, you sniveling little—"

"Now, Geoffrey," said Monsignor Allworthy, striding up between them. "Gabriel didn't intend any insult, I'm sure. He just has a mouth that doesn't know what it's saying sometimes, don't you, my boy?"

Geoffrey stopped shouting and settled for seething quietly. Gabriel did too. He'd rather swallow Geoffrey's forthright insults than Monsignor Allworthy's jovial ones any day—Monsignor Allworthy's tended to be too accurate for comfort.

"And if Amelia would rather sulk in her room and miss out on a fine day's shooting, that's her foolishness and none of Gabriel's," Monsignor Allworthy went on. "But here's the trouble, Gabriel: I don't think Amelia is in her room. Some local working or freak of the weather's been playing hell with translocation today—which I'm sure Amelia would have noticed if she hadn't been distraught. And Mr. Farliegh tells me there's _things_ abroad in the woods. I'd be after her like a shot, if it weren't for my guests. _You_ find her." Monsignor Allworthy's smile went wider and harder. "And, Gabriel, if my daughter comes to any harm because of your damned rudeness, I'll have your life. You can spare one."

Gabriel didn't feel as though he could spare one. It was true that Monsignor Allworthy made do with three, and sometimes wondered aloud what sort of milksop nine-lived enchanter managed to make it to his majority with eight, but they were Gabriel's _lives_. It didn't seem right that Monsignor Allworthy should threaten them as casually as his masters at school used to confiscate his pocket-money. But he didn't argue, just stared to translocate to Amelia's room at the castle. If she was there, it would save everyone trouble, although the mood she'd been in it might also mean things thrown at Gabriel's head. And if she wasn't there, it seemed possible that his attempt to translocate there would take him wherever _her _presumed attempt to translocate there had.

The world started to dissolve around him, not smooth and orderly as it usually did, but swaying like the deck of a ship in a storm. _If Amelia didn't notice this_, he thought, _she must have been _furious . . .

He came out of the translocate sick and dizzy, staggered, bumped into something, and leaned against it with both hands and a shoulder—at least it was a fixed point in all this swaying motion. It turned out to be a tree. He swallowed, breathed deeply, and looked around. He was in a forest, more precisely than that he couldn't say. The sun was still shining, now filtered through the treetops, the air had the same bite of frost, neither warmer nor colder, and the trees were the same sorts of trees that he was familiar with, so he hoped he hadn't gone too far. Amelia was nowhere to be seen. The source of his distress, however, was. Someone had taken a length of twine and affixed a pocket-mirror to a branch of the tree he was leaning against. The mirror was heavily bespelled, in a way he didn't recognize, and described slow circles in the air above his head. It was no wonder that translocation was unreliable. The question was, who'd done it, and why?

There was a pair of legs dangling from the tree above him, long and grubby and boyish, which might know the answer. "What are you doing?" Gabriel asked them.

The legs were joined by the rest of a body, a face, and a shock of chestnutty hair, leaning out along the tree limb. It was the gamekeeper's boy. His scowl made Gabriel recoil.

"What I'm told," said the gamekeeper's boy. "I always do what I'm told, because I've got a duty, and it's important, or so I've been told. I'd like to tell them to take their duty and stuff it up their arses."

Gabriel was torn between being shocked at the boy's language and manners, and wholehearted agreement. "But if it's got to be done," he said, using the argument he often used on himself, "better you than someone like—like Mr. Farleigh."

The boy dropped out of the tree, landed neatly at Gabriel's feet, and frowned up at him. "I never thought about it like that. Could be you're right. But I can't believe—there's got to be some other way. Someday I'll find one."

The last four words hung in the air with a resonance like a crystal goblet struck with a spoon. They were true. "When you do," said Gabriel, "let me know, will you?"

"Why?" said the boy, with an expression of friendly interest, as if he was prepared to listen to Gabriel's troubles all day.

"I don't want to be Chrestomanci any more than you want to be a gamekeeper," Gabriel admitted.

"Shit." All the friendliness went out of the boy's face, and all the color too. He took a step backwards. "You mean you're—shit. Fool, son of a donkey, Elijah Pinhoe."

Gabriel was stung. It was bad enough that he had to be Chrestomanci, bad enough that Geoffrey and maybe Monsignor Allworthy himself hated him for it, but did this grubby boy have to hate him too? "They do say," he said, "that prophecy is only given to idiots nowadays."

If he'd said that to Geoffrey, it would have been shapechanging at dawn for sure. This boy—Elijah—just went even paler. "Was that—_was_ that prophecy I spoke? You're not having me on?" His voice was high and pleading.

"I don't lie," said Gabriel. "I don't have the knack."

"Don't you," Elijah breathed. "You'd be doing me a service if you never spoke to Gaffer Farleigh, then. Bleeding _shit_." His eyes were very round, and he stood for a long moment staring at nothing. Then he shook himself. "Likely it means my death. That'd be the simplest way to fulfill it," he said with a spreading manic grin entirely at odds with his words. "Either way, I can't possibly get into worse trouble if I let the unicorn escape, now can I?"

"The what?" said Gabriel. He had the horrible feeling that the conversation he thought he'd been having wasn't the same as the one Elijah had been having.

"I can't tell you. If you're going to be the next Big Man, I _really_ can't tell you. But," said Elijah, throwing a grin over his shoulder as he slipped between the trees, "if you come with me, I can show you."


	2. The Unicorn at the Fountain

"Wait," said Gabriel, but Elijah kept scrambling through the forest. Gabriel was glad that his gun had disappeared somewhere during his translocate; it was one less thing to keep track of as he scrambled after Elijah, pushing branches out of his face and trying not to trip over roots that the boy had cleared without slowing. He considered letting Elijah go and having done with it—whatever he was after it was nothing to do with Gabriel, or Amelia for that matter—but he couldn't shake the feeling that if he lost Elijah he would be _lost_, well and truly.

"Look," Gabriel panted, as soon as he was caught up enough with Elijah to make speech practical. "There are no unicorns. Not in this world."

"'Course not. You'd know, wouldn't you?" Elijah's friendly manner suggested that this was a joke, not on Gabriel, but on himself, or possibly on existence. Gabriel tried not to bristle. It wasn't Elijah's fault that Gabriel spent most of his time feeling that he didn't know half of what he ought to know, and would never catch up.

"They're huge creatures," said Gabriel. "Where would you hide them?"

"Ah," said Elijah. "Where are we now?"

Gabriel reached out instinctively with his magical senses, and was nearly sick. He missed a tree root and went sprawling, barely catching himself on hands and knees in the leaf mould, his mind a bright dazzle of confusion.

"Sorry," said Elijah, reaching out a hand to help him up. He stood unsteadily. "But you see what I mean."

It was true—the mirror Elijah had hung, and the larger spell it was part of, were doing their work. Create a space that wasn't anywhere, and you could hide anything in it.

Gabriel grumbled, "You might have made your point just as well with words." Or—might he? If the boy was under a compulsion not to speak, Gabriel could probably undo it, but he'd have to go carefully. "We're in Ulverscote Wood, aren't we? But so should Mr. Farleigh be, and the beaters." And the two hundred birds Monsignor Allworthy hoped to shoot, Gabriel suddenly remembered. None of them were in evidence. For all he could hear, the forest might have been empty except for himself and Elijah. The silence was as disturbing in its own way as his magical disorientation.

"They're around," said Elijah. "So we'd better hurry. No one knows these woods as well as Gaffer Farleigh."

They came to a stream, and Gabriel felt a twinge of apprehension for his shoes. But instead of leaping nimbly across it and leaving Gabriel to slog through anyhow, Elijah knelt by the bank and dabbled his fingers in the water. "Ah," he said. His face seemed illuminated from within; the freckles stood out in sharp relief all over it. Then he stood, and hurried upstream. Gabriel hurried after him. There were few enough trees by the bank of the stream that Gabriel's greater height made a difference; he kept pace with Elijah easily, and saw what was on top of the hill at the same time as he did.

There was a clearing, and a pool of water bubbling up from a crack in the rocks. Bending its head to drink, its horn dabbling in the water just as Elijah's fingers had done, was, yes, a unicorn. Nearly as tall as Gabriel at the shoulder, more dazzling in its whiteness than Elijah's mirrors. Its horn was a richer white, and its hooves seemed carved out of some dark wood, too delicate to hold its weight. Gabriel had no special love for horses, but even he was struck by the unicorn's beauty. Elijah simply stood and gaped.

The unicorn raised its head and spared Gabriel a brief glance before turning to Elijah. "Gaffer?" it said.

It wasn't the voice Gabriel would have expected a unicorn to have, if he had believed in talking unicorns, if he had believed in unicorns. Not inhumanly beautiful, but warm and rich and full of humor.

Elijah swallowed. "No," he said hoarsely. "No, I'm Elijah. You don't have to be afraid."

The unicorn stepped around the pool towards Elijah, who raised a wondering hand to its nose. Gabriel felt as awkward as if he had walked in on Geoffrey with his hand up the skirt of one of the maids—which he had done more than once. He tried to look anywhere but at the pair of them, but he wasn't quick enough to spot the movement in the trees, the raised muzzle of the gun, the crack and flash of the shot. Elijah was. He threw himself across the unicorn's flank, and his back exploded in a blossom of red, and an exalted grin spread across his face. It was the same expression he'd had when he'd foretold his own death. Clearly the boy had poetry in his soul. Gabriel couldn't think of anything stupider than poetry at a moment like this.

"Gaffer!" gasped the unicorn. "What's happening?"

It occurred to Gabriel that the unicorn was unfamiliar with the idea of guns. "We have to get away. Can you—" Of course the unicorn could translocate; that was why Mr. Farleigh had had a spell set up so that translocation made you sick and landed you in a place where someone was watching you from a tree. Which meant that Amelia—Gabriel pushed the thought away. Amelia had not been shot, as far as he knew. Elijah had. Gabriel knelt by the boy where he had fallen. His breath was still coming, loud and ragged, his skin was cold, and his eyes stared at nothing. It would be dangerous to move him, but perhaps not as dangerous as staying here, where loud halloos echoed through the woods which had been silent before, and a shotgun was being reloaded with a soft _ka-chunk_.

Gabriel hardly had to put any levitate into it at all, lifting Elijah across the unicorn's back. For all his long-legged grace, he was surprisingly light. Gabriel amended his question to, "Can you run?"

In answer, the unicorn hurtled down the hill, with Gabriel pelting alongside, and gunfire at their heels. In consideration of Gabriel, or Elijah, the unicorn was checking its speed, and Gabriel could get enough breath to pant, "Not this way—back the way we came—there's a spell—"

Not that Gabriel could have found his way to the tree where he'd met Elijah, but the unicorn did, surefooted and clearly using senses other than magic. When they were close, and Gabriel could feel the pull and spin of the mirror, he pulled with it, dizzily, effectively sealing the tree in an area of nonexistence within the area of nonexistence. It wouldn't be hard to guess where they were, once Mr. Farleigh and his beaters noticed that the spell had been disrupted, but Gabriel had bought them some time. Gently as he knew how, he lowered Elijah off the unicorn's back and on to the forest floor. His breath fluttered shallowly. All three of them were sticky with blood.

Gabriel could call Monsignor Allworthy. He'd be furious with Gabriel for losing Amelia, maybe even kill him as he'd threatened—but Gabriel did have eight lives left, and Elijah only had the one. It seemed a fair exchange. If even Monsignor Allworthy could be summoned here through the thicket of spells, and if he could get Elijah back through them to a doctor.

The unicorn bent over Elijah, not quite touching him with its horn. "I could heal him," it said, "but—he seems to be full of lead pellets."

"Birdshot," said Gabriel. "It's a weapon." He searched for some less obvious thing to say. "It goes very fast, and it can tear a person up inside."

"Yes," said the unicorn, "but I'm not sure it's safe to leave them in."

"_I_ can get it out. Easily," said Gabriel. "But that's dangerous too. I'm not a doctor . . . ." Gabriel looked at the unicorn. The unicorn looked at Gabriel. "Together, then."

Gabriel put one hand on the unicorn's foreleg, and the other above Elijah's back. Slowly and carefully, he called to the shot inside Elijah, and felt the unicorn's magic flowing through him too, guiding the passage of the metal, mending and strengthening as it went. Soon Gabriel was left with a handful of lead, and Elijah with a shredded jacket and shirt, and a whole and pinkly healing back. His breath came quiet and steady, and the color had returned to his skin, but he didn't stir or open his eyes.

"It's up to the Gaffer now," said the unicorn.

"Why do you keep calling him that?" said Gabriel. "Isn't it how the country people say grandfather? Elijah's far too young to be anyone's grandfather." But, it came to Gabriel, he ought to be someday: old but hale, surrounded by children, grandsons and granddaughters on his knee. Gabriel found that he resented the fact that Elijah might never be a grandfather quite fiercely.

The unicorn snorted. "When you're my age, you'll find that half a century here or there makes very little difference," it said. "A Gaffer is more than that. It's the old blood, the ones who've lived in this country since the glaciers retreated—no offense to yourself, nine-lifer. But it's the Gaffers who carry the weight of the land with them, who stand between the Folk and the humans. It's been more than a thousand years since I was last in these forests, and it hasn't been easy to get back. I needed to speak to a Gaffer. And now that I've found one, he's . . . ." The unicorn tossed its head in what Gabriel could have sworn was a shrug. It sounded tired.

"The last time you were in these forests," Gabriel said, "my ancestors were probably still living in Babylonia. But I'll help you, if I can."


	3. The Unicorn Leaps the Stream

**Note: I'm sorry this chapter took so long! I will try to get the rest of them out in a more timely fashion.**

The unicorn might have answered Gabriel, but just then several things happened at once. Elijah lifted his head and blinked. Gabriel felt the fabric of his hastily-assembled spell begin to tear. The unicorn pricked up its ears and shifted nervously. A stout young man in tweeds crashed into the clearing. "It's the abomination!" he shouted, then looked down at his gun in consternation. Gabriel had been ready this time, and had decided that the powder inside was much too damp to fire.

"Your mum's an abomination, Jacky Callow," said Elijah, struggling to his knees.

"Elijah? What's happened to you?"

"Not you, clearly." Elijah's lip curled. "Couldn't hit the broad side of a barn."

Jacky Callow lowered his gun warily, his eyes narrowing as they went from Elijah to the unicorn to Gabriel. "Huh. Cheek me all you like, boy; I won't be the one getting on Gaffer Farleigh's bad side. What d'you mean, getting Them from That Castle mixed up in this?"

"I beg your pardon," said Gabriel. "I had no intention of becoming involved in your affairs, whatever they are, nor do I believe Elijah intended to involve me in them. I was only searching for a—a friend of mine, who has gone missing." It was all true, and largely irrelevant, but to Gabriel's surprise Callow relaxed and began nodding along.

"Not a good day to be riding in the woods," he said, "but I guess you couldn't help it."

Riding—Gabriel looked at the unicorn again. It was a duller white than it had been; its legs were shorter and its body thicker. More remarkably, it was wearing a saddle and tack, and seemed to have lost its horn.

There was more movement in the trees around. "False alarm," called Callow. "It's just some . . . gentleman and his horse. Seems a member of the shooting party's gone missing, and he's looking for him."

"Her," Gabriel corrected him, but having comfortably classified Gabriel as some . . . gentleman, Callow didn't seem inclined to pay much attention to what he had to say. Two more village types joined them, the tall lanky freckled one of whom bore a strong family resemblance to Elijah.

"Oh aye?" he said. "Best keep with us; you don't know these woods, you'll find yourself getting into mischief. We'll find your friend."

Gabriel looked at the three large, armed men, clustered around him wearing helpful expressions. He didn't look at Elijah or the unicorn, but he could feel the tension of them at his back. "Thank you," he said.

Gabriel found himself—and the unicorn, and Elijah—being steered towards a track, which turned onto a bridle path. He didn't dare try to figure out where he was magically again, but he noticed the usual background noises of the forest start to reappear as they walked: birdsong, and things scurrying underfoot. There hadn't been much time to ask the unicorn questions, but now Gabriel wished he'd made better use of what he'd had. Where had it come from, and why, and why were Mr. Farleigh and his men trying to kill it? He hoped he hadn't joined the wrong side of the quarrel altogether.

_I've joined the side that doesn't shoot children, anyhow._ The thought wasn't as comforting as Gabriel could have hoped. He was out of his depth, and he knew it.

"This friend of yours, then," said Callow. "What happened?"

"It's Miss Allworthy—Monsignor Allworthy's daughter. She—" Belatedly, Gabriel realized it might not be wise to reveal what he'd guessed about the translocation spell. And wise or not, he didn't care to discuss _why_ Amelia had disappeared either.

He was saved from having to decide what to say by the appearance of a child running up the path, smaller and even grubbier than Elijah. "I got her! The bomashin! She showed up just like Dad said, and I done the jinx he gave me. And she's a real pretty bomashin, with dark curls and a smart shooting jacket and all."

"Norah," said Callow warningly.

"But—" Elijah looked sideways at the unicorn, and bit his lip.

"Amelia," Gabriel's stomach felt cold. "If you people have hurt her . . . ."

"Softly, now." Callow held up a placating hand. "There's been a misunderstanding . . . most likely . . . ." He frowned at Norah. "But we'll sort it out. No one's been hurt, I'm sure."

"Monsignor Allworthy will be very relieved to hear it," said Gabriel. "Shall I call him here, and you can sort it out with him?"

"Don't do that," said Elijah. "Please. Just bring your, your horse back to the stables and I'll get Miss Amelia back, safe and sound. If I don't, you can, you can . . . ."

Elijah, Gabriel had already noticed, had more heroism than sense. His plan would require Gabriel to hand over his responsibility for Amelia to a young boy, and leave Elijah with the people who'd shot him. But assuming Callow was telling the truth—or rather, only lying a little bit—and he didn't mean to hurt Amelia, it might be safer for her to let Elijah retrieve her without interference from anyone from the castle. These men seemed as desperate to keep their secrets as they were to catch the unicorn. Desperate men, Monsignor Allworthy was always saying, were prone to doing stupid things.

Another advantage—from Elijah's point of view—was that by getting Gabriel to leave the woods, Elijah would show himself to be working with Mr. Farleigh's men rather than against them. In the meantime, while they were busy with freeing Amelia from the trap she'd inadvertently sprung, Gabriel would lead the unicorn to safety, and no one would be the wiser.

That aspect of the plan didn't appeal to Gabriel. He generally preferred to be the wiser. But if Monsignor Allworthy never found out that Amelia had been jinxed by a small girl, he would be less inclined to kill Gabriel for it. And since Gabriel had more sense than heroism, his own ignorance was a price he was willing to pay.

"Very well," said Gabriel. "But, Elijah . . . ."

"Don't worry about Miss Amelia," said Elijah. It was more plea than reassurance. "She'll be all right."

_Don't _you _do anything stupid_, was what Gabriel wanted to say. But he couldn't think of a way to convey it in front of their audience. He nodded, and turned away, and the unicorn followed.

"Unicorn," said Gabriel, once he was sure the men were out of earshot.

"Molly," said the unicorn.

Of course the unicorn's name was Molly. Gabriel should have known better by now than to have expected something like _Hadariel_ or _Light-Breaking-on-Water_. "Gabriel de Witt," he said. "I'm honored." He could tell it was true, because he was in an uncomfortable and quite likely dangerous situation. Honors were like that, in Gabriel's experience. "Tell me, what—"

A dog barked nearby. Gabriel jumped and Molly shied, and a dozen partridge broke cover and took to the air. Rifles cracked somewhere in front of them, and from behind a line of men advanced, shouting and waving flags. Molly turned and bolted.

"Wait," Gabriel called, running after her. "It's only the beaters! They don't—" In truth, they might mean Molly harm. But Gabriel could probably have continued the bluff if she hadn't lost her head.

It was too late for that. Gabriel could only run, and try to keep Molly in sight as she dodged between the trees. He heard a stream ahead, and hoped for a moment it might stop her—but there was a sound other than rushing water, a spell worked into the ripples on the surface and the rocks in the stream-bed. He doubted it was friendly. "Stop!" he shouted. He might have saved his breath. Molly didn't slow when she got to the bank. She launched herself across the stream, and disappeared midair.

Gabriel pelted after her. His shoes and the bottoms of his trousers were soaked and muddy by the time he got to the opposite bank, but he couldn't work out what the spell had done, and Molly wasn't there when he climbed out. Mr. Farleigh was, along with a handful of men who made Elijah's hulking relatives look like children.

"I told you," said Mr. Farleigh. "I won't have you mucking things up."


End file.
